Archive for pirates

I bet you thought I was done with talking about The Windflower by Laura London. But how could I be done when I have not yet talked about Rand Morgan, Pirate Extraordinaire?
I loved the sheer over-the-top pirateness of Rand’s characterization.

Rand Morgan. They say he wore an emerald slit from the belly of a priest when that unfortunate divine had swallowed it to prevent its theft. Ten years ago the Queen Anne had disappeared without a trace, and whispers said that Morgan had seized a fortune in bullion from her hold and then locked her captain and crew in the first mate’s cabin, setting the decks ablaze and leaving the men inside to a flaming grave. And just last October the Black Joke had seized an unarmed merchant ship and taken from it the governor of South Carolina and his five-year-old son, holding them at cost of their lives until the governor’s distraught wife had gathered a ransom of fifteen thousand dollars.

This is how Merry, the narrator, sees him.

He was tall enough to have to stoop slightly as he entered, and he had black, heavy-lidded, deep-set eyes, which looked around the room seeing no one, seeing everyone, intense and sleepy at the same time. The face was impassive, as if carved in stone, with heavy cheekbones and a broad brow; it was a face made to split the sea air and crash the waves of fortune’s hurricane. His long hair was midnight black, thick and unruly on his brow, and of the same hue as his silk shirt. There was an aura about him—an air of the craftsman, one whose mastery of certain skills made him indifferent to the judgments of the uninitiated. That is what frightened Merry the most—his indifference. He didn’t look evil, only as if he did not care.

One might be forgiven for assuming he will become the hero of the piece…alas, you would be wrong. He never even gets a secondary-plot romance, which is a great pity because he’s such a wonderfully ambiguous characters. His morality is dubious for a large portion of the novel, and even though he’s eventually revealed to be a privateer rather than an out-and-out pirate, it’s clear that he occasionally slips to the side of lawlessness. It’s also unclear, at first anyway, whether he purchased the boy Cat from a brothel to be his love slave (he didn’t) or whether he is willing to kill the heroine, Merry (he doesn’t kill her).

I would be quite willing to read a sequel featuring Rand; preferably Cat would be in the story, too, unless he was off having his own adventures in another sequel. Except…I think Rand would lose a lot of his edge were he in a romantic relationship. It would take some work for me to find him just as intriguing as he is in The Windflower while at the same time making me feel sympathetic towards his relationship. And of course, a very special heroine would be required. Preferably, she would be a pirate, too. Though a time-traveling FBI agent might be acceptable. Or a woman who fought in the American Revolution, dressed as a man. Or….

I still haven’t decided who would be suitable as “fantasy casting” for Rand Morgan. Any suggestions?

Last month, I read The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin by Colette Moody, mostly because it was a lesbian pirate novel, and I’d never read one before.
Plot summary: “The Gulf of Mexico, 1702: When pirates of the square-rigger Original Sin steal ashore to abduct a doctor to tend to their wounded, they end up settling for the doctor’s attractive fiancée–Celia Pierce, the town seamstress.

Together with Gayle Malvern, daughter of the wounded pirate captain “Madman” Malvern, Celia becomes a reluctant participant in an unexpectedly thrilling journey through the Caribbean. For Gayle, Celia’s presence is at first a welcome and shapely distraction, but as her attraction to the seamstress deepens, she realizes that Celia comes to mean more to her than is prudent. As Celia and Gayle navigate the perilous territories of gypsies, prostitutes, mercenaries, and slave traders, they forge a partnership born of necessity that Gayle soon hopes will veer away from insurmountable danger–and instead detour directly to her bed.”

The book was a lot of fun, though I’m not sure it will appeal to all romance readers. To me, even though Celia and Gayle do fall in love, the book was more a commentary on pirate novels than a romance novel, offering suggestions as to how an abduction narrative would function if a woman pirate captain did the abducting, and if a woman were her captive who finds freedom and personal fulfillment through a buccaneering life.

The setup for the story isn’t totally unbelievable. Gayle has sailed on the Original Sin for years, since her mother’s death, because her father is the captain. She becomes captain only when her father is seriously wounded, and has to win over the crew; she succeeds partly because all agree her captaincy is temporary. Gayle’s subsequent derring-do privileges brains (clever ruses) over brawn, which both reflects her lesser physical strength and the whole idea of pirates as societal underdogs.

More unlikely to me, in the historical sense, is that Gayle’s sexuality is well-known to both the crew and to the townspeople they meet on land, yet it’s barely remarked upon. It’s part of the story’s fantasy–perhaps Gayle’s public lesbianism reflects the author’s avoidance of having to tell yet another Coming Out story. Instead she can get right down to the swashbuckling.

Celia is a fun character with a sarcastic pov. She’s a gorgeous young woman, in the tradition of the heroine abducted by pirates, but she’s also brave and self-sufficient. She does not cower from Gayle’s sexuality or her own; once her eyes are opened to the possibility of a sexual relationship with a woman, there are few romantic roadblocks.

Read a pirate book in May! You know you want to!
A few weeks ago someone brought up the idea on Twitter of reading a pirate book during the month of May. Then everyone in the discussion apparently forgot about it, except me.

That means I get to pick the rules, right? So, to play: read a pirate book you haven’t read before. Then talk/write about it. I was thinking romances, but classics that aren’t romances might be cool, too – for instance, I’ve never read Treasure Island.

If you read a pirate book this month and comment about it in your blog, comment on this post with the book’s title and a link, and I’ll compile a list for another post next month. Or you can just comment with “Arr!” or “Matey” or “Merchant and pirate were for a long period one and the same person. Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality” (Nietzsche) if you are so moved.

Me, I’m off to read The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin by Colette Moody. I think Geena Davis would be great in that! If I finish that in time, I will also try out Laura London’s classic, The Windflower, and if I finish that, then I’ll go for a re-read of Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood.

Saloon girl!
A pirate float!
You can’t have a parade without a Stormtrooper.
My favorite float had a circus theme.
And finally, I leaned over the police barrier for this view up Broad Street towards City Hall.

As promised, more pictures from the Mummers’ Parade on New Year’s Day.
That is one sexy French maid.
Grandma Gaga is doing her best to compete, though.
And then–ELVIS!!!
The Buccaneer Bakers! Pirates and baking, my kind of group.
Their pirate flag.

This post was originally written for The Smutketeers; I’ve expanded it here.
Why did I want to write about pirates? Well, because they’re sexy. It’s the outfits, you know. All that silk and tattered finery! The amazing tattoos. The cutlasses. The way they grab hostages and lock them in cabins for their own pleasure. And finally, the isolation. Being stuck on a ship together is like the traditional “trapped in a lonely cabin” story, only with the possibility of being eaten by sharks. It’s just plain fun. I had a blast reading the back cover blurbs on a pile of pirate romance novels, and making lists of all the tropes.

I was never the biggest fan of pirates before. I enjoyed reading the classic Captain Blood in high school and, more recently, saw the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I’ve read some pirate and sea adventure romances, and am looking forward to reading, in particular, Captured by Beverly Jenkins. I researched Asian pirates, particularly Japanese pirates in conflict with China and Korea, which was really fascinating. But my true loves so far as ocean novels goes are the Napoleonic sea adventure novels by C.S. Forester (the Hornblower series) and Patrick O’Brian (the Aubrey-Maturin series). (Yes, I’ve seen all of the film and television adaptations, but I love the books best.)

Since my novel was set in a fantasy world, I decided to combine these two sub-genres, pirate romances and sea adventures, for The Duke and the Pirate Queen. I took elements from my reading on Asian pirates and combined them with Napoleonic-era European ships and the tropes of sea adventure novels. The heroine, Imena Leung, is the daughter of an Imperial admiral who married one of her barbarian captives. Imena fought pirates, so really she’s a privateer, but the world doesn’t see her that way, and now pirates are after her again, when she thought she’d put it all behind her. And now she isn’t just protecting herself, but her lover.

For my pirates, I had fun both with making them eeeevil and also making them a bit more complex than one’s standard mental image of a pirate who is all outfit and greed. I ended up with two major pirate characters. One of them I made into a flamboyantly angry and greedy villain. The other was more ambiguous; at times she appears cruel and violent, but there are also good reasons for some of the things she does.

I used the pirates’ attack as a way of propelling several aspects of the plot. First, their attack created an opportunity for a big action scene! But eventually, their attack also led to emotional revelations for the hero and heroine.

This post was originally written for Inez Kelley’s blog.
I have never been a particular fan of pirates. They’re really just thieves on boats, right? (*ducks missiles*)

Perhaps that’s why the heroine of The Duke and the Pirate Queen was actually a privateer, sanctioned by her government to hunt pirates. She’s on the side of Law. Mostly. She fought and fights against enemies who have fewer scruples than she does, and that makes them more dangerous.

However, even though I’m not fond of pirate moral codes, I do adore their outfits. And action scenes! Flinging themselves from one ship to another, brandishing cutlasses, ululating bloodcurdling battle shrieks, all while very snappily dressed in silks and velvets and too much jewelry.

Okay, so maybe I do like pirates….

What I like are when pirates are the villains. True, I’ve enjoyed quite a few romance novels with pirate heroes, but those heroes always ended up vindicated in the end. For me, pirates are like vampires. I prefer them as villains. They’re really snazzy villains.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the appeal of pirates, particularly in romance novels. Pirates seem to hold a special place in the genre, at least among heroes, along with The Rake or The Highlander.

My theory (I always have a theory!) is that for pirates, their transgression is what appeals. Transgression is important, I feel, in romantic/sexual fantasies. Being allowed to transgress boundaries, even in fantasy, significantly affects our thoughts and feelings about those boundaries in our daily lives. I think Pirates also represent freedom. Rarely in romance novels are pirates exclusively mercenary in their goals. It may not be immediately revealed, but eventually, in most cases, we find out the pirate hero is motivated by righteous revenge.

Also, the pirate isn’t supposed to adhere to societal rules. Pirates are free to swoop in and take what they want. (That’s a nice fantasy in itself.) In a pirate romance novel, it’s most often the heroine who is wanted by the pirate (also a nice fantasy!). The heroine fights against the pirate’s transgression, asserting herself in that way, but eventually asserts herself again by succumbing to his freedom, of going against society, perhaps helping him with his revenge, or finding his lost brother/sister, etc.–his quest. When the heroine yields to the pirate hero, she yields also to the possibilities his transgressive life offers, possibilities that her own, normative life does not.